snO M G!!

Or Snow-megeddan, or the Blizzard of 2011.

Pictured below is an unlucky WBBM news reporter.  Hopefully by now she's indoors defrosting  As of 11 p.m. last night poor woman was still out there in the wind, on television in Northern Indiana, braving the snow.  Watching her talk from the eye of a blizzard hurt.  You just wanted to shout,

Get inside already!  What a crazy job!

But the show, the snow,  must go on.

A person like me wants to Tweet on a day like this,

It's DEEP! Don't expect to go anywhere!

But you know that's ridiculous, tweeting the obvious. All over the country people have been talking about the snow, the weather, and there's absolutely nothing new about it, except that this storm is said to be the greatest in 44 years. 

What makes a storm great?

Even more than the snow, it's the wind.  The wind is fierce, and the snow is wet, and you put them together and you get a cold wet blast in the face, unless you don't care about how you look and have covered every inch of your body.  Nobody cares how they look in a blizzard.  Actually, there have to be exceptions to that.

All I could think about, well not the only thing, but while urban cross-country skiing home from work yesterday the movie,  A Mighty Wind, came into my head.  That's worth seeing again, maybe tomorrow.  Nobody is moving, no one will want to see me in the office, and they can't, because I won't be there.  Travel won't be possible.  All the schools will be closed.

People gave me funny looks carrying my skis on the bus heading off to work but look who's laughing now.  It's easier to walk in these.

Not that forty to sixty mile per hour winds, especially on skis,  aren't humbling.  You can't ski into that north wind. I could go on and on, tell you the story of how I really didn't ski home, rather took the bus to a stop five blocks from my house and skied home from there, which felt great, mainly because the neighborhood houses blocked the wind.  And I could tell you that my mother called me seventy times.

I worried too,  last night, having friends in high-rises, tweeting that their buildings were swaying.  And the roof of Wrigley Field is in pieces all over the city, thousands have no electricity.

Being self-centered, like everyone else, what worried me most yesterday was that my son drove to school to the south side (we're north), thinking he would get out before the storm. Before I left the office, as I tightened my ski boots, I texted him, hoping he had made it home. 

You home?

The dismay, or is that despair in the text, palpable.

Still in traffic.

Not wanting to distract him, I do the maternal thing, text back short,

Be careful.

He texts me back,

K.

This is not reassuring.  When I reach my door step he is not home.  I grab a shovel and hope for the best, and within 15 minutes he pulls up in his car.

The people of my tribe have a prayer that we're supposed to say when we've been saved from a very dangerous possibility.  It's called, benching gomel (both spelled like you would think, benching, go- Mel!).  First words out of his mouth,  "I should bench gomel.  That was terrible.   The winds from the lake!  I forgot about the winds from the lake!  You need four-wheel drive!"

Not happening on a 2001 Altima.  He helps me shovel and we go inside to hear that Lake Shore Drive is now closed.  People are running out of gas, nobody is moving.  A spun out bus has blocked three lanes.

This makes for a storm that's mighty.

Luckily, I had shopped in the morning so we would have something to eat for dinner.  Target had food yesterday, but not that much, because people prepared ahead of time.  Aside from Mubarak and Egypt, preparing for the storm has been the news story for four days straight.  My plan last night, once everyone was accounted for, was to stay in, cook, and watch other people cope, worry that we would lose electricity. 

Then kaboom!  Snow lightening.  Something new to worry about.  You haven't lived until you've seen the white night light up with lightening.

You do begin to think catastrophic thoughts.

But basically, you can't wait to just read real books, and later, go out and play.  One of my friends just offered me hot chocolate if I happened to be zipping around near her house.  This sounds like an offer that can't be refused.

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